In a bid to minister to the younger Catholics, the Vatican has announced that Pope Francis will be joining Instagram this week. Specifically, it would be on Saturday, 19th of March as he celebrates the third anniversary of inauguration. He will use the handle @Franciscus
Pope Francis is already on Twitter. He tweets in nine languages using @Pontiflex with the English account followed by nearly 9 million people and the Spanish one by more than 11 million.
Related Story: Twitter releases special emojis for Pope Francis (@Pontiflex) historic visit to US
Kevin Systrom, Instagram’s CEO and co-founder, met Pope Francis at the Vatican in February, later revealing they had discussed “the power of images to unite people across different cultures and languages”. This is what he said on his Instagram page – “Today I had the honor of meeting Pope Francis. We spoke about the power of images to unite people across different cultures and languages. It was by far one of the most memorable experiences of my life!”
Francis’s interest in the internet was underlined in January when he spoke out against online trolls. He has also hosted major figures in the new digital economy, including the Google boss Eric Schmidt and Apple chief Tim Cook.